The question is already being asked of football, the team sport with the highest rate of concussion, according to medical and neuropsychologicalresearchers. Hockey has the second-highest rate.

“Of course, the ideal number of concussions would be zero,” Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the National Hockey League, said at the league’s all-star game in January while noting a slight rise in the concussion rate this season. “Our objective is to come as close as possible to getting that result without changing the fundamental nature of our game.”

But what is the “fundamental nature” of hockey? Does it include checks to the head? Fighting?

It is not always easy to say how much you can reduce the violence in a sport without losing its essence.

Certain sports, like boxing and football, are intrinsically violent, and perhaps cannot be made safe without sacrificing their true natures. In others — like baseball — what violence there is seems to be merely contingent, and with changes like better helmets such sports can be made relatively safe without threatening the heart of the game.

One question is how essential fighting is to hockey. While fighting has been banished from youth games and is fairly rare in European and international play, it is, for better or worse, a significant part of the professional game in North America. The N.H.L. averages roughly one fight every two games; minor and Canadian leagues average a little over one per game; the most notorious minor league, the semipro Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey in Quebec, averages 3.2 per game.

Fighting draws fans, and some argue that the threat of retributiondeters players from more egregious acts of stick-swingingviolence. But the majority of head trauma results from regular play;concussion rates are high even in youth leagues, where there is little or no fighting. According to a study published last year in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Alberta’s 8,800 11- and 12-year-old players would suffer 400 fewer concussions each year if body checking were eliminated at that age.

If the goal is to cut down on the rate of dangerous head impacts, hockey has a big advantage over football. Though the National Football League has taken steps to eliminate the most severe sorts of hits to the head, you can’t have a proper football game without several people battering one another in the head on every play.

Photo

Credit
Hal Mayforth

It’s different for hockey — players can skate fast, check hard, stick-handle the puck and otherwise play a full-tilt game without anyone getting hit in the head.

And yet it happens, frequently. The N.H.L. records an average of roughly 75 concussions per year, a figure believed to be vastly underreported.

The most detailed study, in which independent clinicians conducted in-game examinations of players suspected of head trauma in Ontario junior hockey, found 21 diagnosed concussions in 52 games. (Five of those concussions were the result of fights.)

The N.H.L. tried to address the issue of concussions at the start of the current season, adopting Rule 48, a measure banning blind-side checks to the head. But it still allowed shoulder checks to the head if they were delivered head-on.

That measure fell short of more stringent anti-concussion rules governing play in the International Ice Hockey Federation, which oversees the Olympics, international tournaments and European leagues. Federation rules penalize all contact to the head and, to guard against whiplash injuries, the neck area as far down as the collarbone.

The N.H.L. has not adopted these strict rules, because many coaches and players believe that the rough and tumble — or violence, if you prefer — is essential to hockey’s being hockey.

“I think it has reduced hitting in those leagues, and I’m not in favor of that,” Brian Burke, general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, said of the stricter standard. Mr. Burke is the leading spokesman for the conservative wing of the game, which contends that putting too much of a brake on hitting robs the game of its appealing, rock-’em sock-’em robustness.

The N.H.L. general managers will gather in Florida on March 14 and 15 for their annual meetings, at which rule changes are always on the agenda. The main item is whether to adopt more stringent rules governing checks to the head, and perhaps whether further measures are needed to limit fighting.

All those proposed rules, however, will be considered in light of the slippery question of what counts as the game’s “essence.”

Mr. Burke has called hockey a game in which you can get knocked down hard “any time you have the puck,” and has argued that that shouldn’t change: “That’s what’s distinctive and interesting — and what our fans like in our game. We’re going to have concussions. What we have to do is make the game as safe as we can make it within that context.”